How many warehouses

[richv68]

How many warehouses do you use for delivery? I'm at 16 businesses at the moment. Everything was going fine with my imports and deliveries. Then when I opened business 16 (another supermarket), suddenly every night i get several issues in Bizman, where some locations do not have some products to sell AFTER the drivers restocked most of my businesses.

To note, my logistics manager is at 100%, managing a two-slot warehouse where my two drivers (also at 100%) drive the largest trucks. The warehouse states that it can deliver to 16 destinations (i.e what I have). Not only that, every morning after the warehouses receive imports and the drivers restock most businesses, I can see in the warehouses products that are listed as missing from some businesses.

Hence I suspect that my warehouse/delivery setup is not enough, in spite of the warehouse reporting "Will deliver to 16 destinations". I suspect there are other limits (such as the amount of products that drivers can move daily) but I can see no metrics not other aids to understand these limits (perhaps I'm missing something?). The number of destinations served seems a bit misleading if drivers can't properly serve them.

Has anyone reached this kind of issue? If so, setting up additional warehouses solves the problem? I was about to do this, but I noticed that purchasing agents can only deliver products to one and only one warehouse. This is not so bad for redundant products (paper bags, soda, etc,) which can be imported from two importers. But then for ice cream and bread (which can only be imported form one importer) we are stuck with only one warehouse delivering to all receivers of these products. So we lose on the number of destinations served because in the end two warehouses would have to serve the same business for different products (or we bail on separating into two warehouses, period, and accept the delivery issues i'm facing). A good example of this is the lack of capacity to decouple fast food and supermarket businesses, because they share some products from just one importer (like ice cream), or coffees and supermarkets (they share breads from one importer), etc.

All this could be avoided if (like on real life) importers could deliver to multiple warehouses, so that one warehouse would supply ice cream (as an example) to fast food places, and another warehouse would supply ice cream to super markets, as they both would receive imports from the same importer. This is not currently possible, from what I can see (the Purchasing Agents' window has a pull down selection to which warehouse a purchased product will go, instead of check boxes to select to which warehouses a purchase needs to be split and distributed). Especially since markets and fastfoods both are defined by gains from small profit products sold in large quantities. Importing the same product to multiple warehouses would solve this, and this is how it works in real life anyways.

Just wondering if anyone has run into this, and if you've found good workarounds besides accepting defeat and simply reducing product variety in your businesses to avoid redundant products. I don't even have redundancy within a city zone, so it's not like I'm shooting myself in the foot by lowering demand. I distribute businesses across different zones, but warehouses apparently look at the city as a whole, not by zone.

Cheers.

[SLIPPY]

I use 5 main warehouses one for each importer plus one for just bags and soda. These 5 hold the bulk of my orders . They then feed my "all item" warehouses that hold a little from each importer and can supply any type of business.

[richv68]

Interesting. Out of curiosity, how many businesses do you currently have? And what persuaded you to go to this elegant level of complexity? I.e did you notice similar problems like mine, where I assume you had just one warehouse supplying everyone and one day you realized it was not enough? or you did it for easier organization but there was never an actual impact to deliveries, etc? I'm still trying to figure out if the game gives explicit indications of the drivers' capacity to supply businesses, because all I can see is that X amount of businesses "can be delivered" to from the Logistics Managers' window in Bizman, but apparently that's not quite correct (at least from what I can see). Thanks.

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by richv68:

Then when I opened business 16 (another supermarket), suddenly every night i get several issues in Bizman, where some locations do not have some products to sell AFTER the drivers restocked most of my businesses.

If it says your warehouse will deliver to 16 locations, then you get 16 locations. If a store is not receiving the goods, the most likely reason is that the store ran out of storage space! That's what I would check first!

Originally posted by richv68:

All this could be avoided if (like on real life) importers could deliver to multiple warehouses

Two ways to do this is: have the importer send the goods to one warehouse and have that warehouse send it to other warehouses for a larger distribution network.

Or just have two purchasing agents send the goods to two different warehouse!

[Sarsgamer]

It sounds like you're not importing enough or possibly your stores don't have enough storage to keep the store supplied all day.

It's possible that you're attempting to deliver too much to a store but they can't accept it all cause not enough storage space and unfortunately there's no notification of this (I believe there is if an importer can't deliver everything to a warehouse). Best way to check is go to the store right after deliveries happen and check your shelves to see if they are full and if they are you either need more shelves or reduce the delivery quantity.

Demand for product from consumers can change so some days you need to supply stores with more than other days. You just have to run the store for awhile then update the delivery schedule to include more, or reduce, if you don't have the storage space. Then eventually you just copy the same delivery schedule to new setups from existing setups.

Also check that you didn't accidentally set your delivery to be more than it needs to be. Not long ago I accidentally set tomatoes to deliver like 30k to a single store, lol. I tried to let it correct itself, but ended up just selling boxes of tomatoes right from the shelf.

As for warehouse setup; it can vary. As slippy said that would probably be more of a mid- late game strategy. I personally specialize my warehouses. When I open a new warehouse I have an aim of what types of stores I want to open and the warehouse specializes in that and thus the purchaser(s). So as you mention ice cream I'd have a purchaser contracted with Seaside supplying the warehouse with all the foods for supermarket, fruits and veggies, and fast food.

If I wanted to do clothing or jewelry stores I would stock the warehouse with clothing and jewelry store options. I could also do electronics as the jewelry store shares some items. Then if electronics could do others as well as other stores want electronics as well.

Once you have multiple warehouses and multiple purchasers you'll find existing purchasers that can stock other warehouses. Like I have a purchaser just importing some books from BlueStone so when I want another clothing warehouse I can set that purchaser to import clothes to a new warehouse.

[SLIPPY]

Originally posted by richv68:

Interesting. Out of curiosity, how many businesses do you currently have? And what persuaded you to go to this elegant level of complexity? I.e did you notice similar problems like mine, where I assume you had just one warehouse supplying everyone and one day you realized it was not enough? or you did it for easier organization but there was never an actual impact to deliveries, etc? I'm still trying to figure out if the game gives explicit indications of the drivers' capacity to supply businesses, because all I can see is that X amount of businesses "can be delivered" to from the Logistics Managers' window in Bizman, but apparently that's not quite correct (at least from what I can see). Thanks.

I guess what drove the setup was trying to make super stores that sold Items from all the importers without using multiple trucks to do deliveries to 1 store. Using more than 1 truck per delivery is a serious waste of a trucks delivery potential. Also paper bags are a bottleneck since they are used everywhere but only supplied by 2 wholesalers.

It is also just easier to be able to start any business and not have to go through multiple warehouse option screens to fill inventory.

Lastly it just future proofs the supply chain. With this setup i can supply 16 "all item" warehouses from the original 5 main ones, Each all item warehouse can then supply 16 stores for a total of 256 stores potentially supplied from the original 5 main warehouses without multiple trucks delivering to same locations. Not that I have got that far. I don't even know if there are that many properties to buy.

Also as far as i know there is no item limit on the delivery trucks they are only limited to the number of destinations not the amount of goods to each location.

[richv68]

Originally posted by SLIPPY:

Originally posted by richv68:

Interesting. Out of curiosity, how many businesses do you currently have? And what persuaded you to go to this elegant level of complexity? I.e did you notice similar problems like mine, where I assume you had just one warehouse supplying everyone and one day you realized it was not enough? or you did it for easier organization but there was never an actual impact to deliveries, etc? I'm still trying to figure out if the game gives explicit indications of the drivers' capacity to supply businesses, because all I can see is that X amount of businesses "can be delivered" to from the Logistics Managers' window in Bizman, but apparently that's not quite correct (at least from what I can see). Thanks.

I guess what drove the setup was trying to make super stores that sold Items from all the importers without using multiple trucks to do deliveries to 1 store. Using more than 1 truck per delivery is a serious waste of a trucks delivery potential. Also paper bags are a bottleneck since they are used everywhere but only supplied by 2 wholesalers.

It is also just easier to be able to start any business and not have to go through multiple warehouse option screens to fill inventory.

Lastly it just future proofs the supply chain. With this setup i can supply 16 "all item" warehouses from the original 5 main ones, Each all item warehouse can then supply 16 stores for a total of 256 stores potentially supplied from the original 5 main warehouses without multiple trucks delivering to same locations. Not that I have got that far. I don't even know if there are that many properties to buy.

Also as far as i know there is no item limit on the delivery trucks they are only limited to the number of destinations not the amount of goods to each location.

Right. I see. The 5 main ones only receive products from each of the importers (well, 4 besides the dedicated paper bag/soda one; paper bags are a pain!!), they are all double truck'd, maxed experience, so indeed they supply what they import to a max of 16 warehouses each (the same 16 for each of the 4+1 import warehouses). Then the 16 "all items" warehouses can be whatever size, as each is now dedicated to specific businesses, and can supply anything. So i guess you can always start with just one "all items" warehouse and upscale as need be, and only worry if indeed you have more than 256 businesses requiring items (i.e. not including lawyers/web guys; gosh, that's a lot of businesses). In fact I guess you can always start with 5 single VAN warehouses, and upscale these as well as need be. Love it. Thanks for sharing. Don't be offended if I steal your idea :)

Now I just wonder if we have 21 double spot warehouses available, to max out at 256 businesses (I guess you already answered this...)

[richv68]

Originally posted by David Estes Creations:

If it says your warehouse will deliver to 16 locations, then you get 16 locations. If a store is not receiving the goods, the most likely reason is that the store ran out of storage space! That's what I would check first!

Two ways to do this is: have the importer send the goods to one warehouse and have that warehouse send it to other warehouses for a larger distribution network.

Or just have two purchasing agents send the goods to two different warehouse!

David, thanks for the responses. Surely these help others besides me. Just to clarify then:

Originally posted by David Estes Creations:

If it says your warehouse will deliver to 16 locations, then you get 16 locations. If a store is not receiving the goods, the most likely reason is that the store ran out of storage space! That's what I would check first!

I guess you're saying that currently the game sets no limits on the volumes that drivers can deliver to all assigned businesses, correct? If so, I'd really appreciate your confirmation as indeed it would stress that I need to further debug my setup, including shelf capacities.

Originally posted by David Estes Creations:

Or just have two purchasing agents send the goods to two different warehouse!

Wait, are you saying that we can create more than one relation to a single importer? My whole conversation revolved around products that can only be purchased through one importer (ice cream, burgers, etc). I mentioned I see no issue with products procurable through multiple importers. Your comment almost makes me think that we can assign multiple purchasers to a single importer, but I thought I read somewhere else that only one purchaser can be assigned per importer. Can you pls clarify this?

Thanks!! Outstanding customer support from your part, by the way!

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by richv68:

I guess you're saying that currently the game sets no limits on the volumes that drivers can deliver to all assigned businesses, correct? If so, I'd really appreciate your confirmation as indeed it would stress that I need to further debug my setup, including shelf capacities.

Correct! As long as you have enough storage space in the store to receive the items, there are currently no limits to how much volume can be delivered in one night!

Originally posted by richv68:

Wait, are you saying that we can create more than one relation to a single importer? My whole conversation revolved around products that can only be purchased through one importer (ice cream, burgers, etc). I mentioned I see no issue with products procurable through multiple importers. Your comment almost makes me think that we can assign multiple purchasers to a single importer, but I thought I read somewhere else that only one purchaser can be assigned per importer. Can you pls clarify this?

Also correct! Each purchaser can only assign each item to one warehouse, but multiple purchasers can be assigned to each importer!

Originally posted by richv68:

Thanks!! Outstanding customer support from your part, by the way!